Page 41 of The Den of Sin
Her eyes flashed with wariness, unease pouring out of her. She pulled away, climbing back to her own seat. Her walls were firmly back up.
“Just take me back to Tatiana’s, please,” she asked quietly.
Frustration rose within me, but I kept it in check. It has been less than twenty-four hours since we’ve seen each other in my city. She needed time. While I knew for certain there would never be anyone else for me, she might need time. I didn’t want to push her away five years ago, but my pride and misconceived revenge pushed me too far and in the wrong direction. Now that I knew the whole story, I had some serious ground to make up with her. I’d wait. I was going to need a lot of patience, something I’ve never had. In the meantime, I wouldn’t risk anyone getting their paws on something so beautiful as Isabella.
She needed time, and I would give it to her.
* * *
After I dropped off Isabella,I came back to the bar. I thanked all the saints that I had Adrian to keep me updated with everywhere Tatiana and Isabella went. It made it easier to keep tabs on those two.
Walking in, I recalled Isabella’s surprise at finding out I owned this restaurant. Didn’t she ever bother looking up everything I owned? Apparently, she didn’t. It always surprised me to witness her oblivion to money and power. I thought that was all her mother cared about and was the reason she went after my father and later after Lombardo Santos. Yet Isabella came out pure, uncaring of money and status. She couldn’t care less about any of it. When I first met her, I thought it was a pretense, but as the months and years went by, I realized it was just her. She could tell you every brand of bathing suit and where to find best surfboards and beach locations to ride waves, but when it came to knowing famous or powerful people, she couldn’t keep her interest long enough to even look at a magazine page. I heard Tatiana joke about it for as long as they’ve known each other.
I made my way into the basement and I could hear the skin-on-skin meeting and painful yelps by the fucker that tried to slip a roofie into my woman’s drink. The guy was already hooked up to chains and his face was a bloody mess.
I turned to Alexei, who was hanging out with my two bodyguards that dragged these two assholes here, to teach our guy and his friend a lesson.
“Aww, you started without me?” I complained. “You know how much I enjoy the first few punches.”
I watched them as I took time to slide off my suit jacket and roll up the sleeves of my shirt up my forearms.
“Guess what, big brother?” Alexei played along. “Regi and Dino work with Alphonso Romano. Not for him but with him. These two are big shots.” Alexei smirked, his words taunting. “They had specific instructions to bring the girls back to him.”
The rage simmered, flowing through my blood. I had always been known to keep a cool head and as an unemotional fucker. But images of Isabella or Tatiana drugged up and limp, while these sick assholes touched them had me teetering on the edge. Alphonso Romano was the worst kind of scumbag, right alongside Benito King. Those two had an old agreement, moving flesh for general distribution. But they also had another exclusive agreement going, moving only certain kinds of women. The underworld whispers called it the Belles and Mobsters' agreement. Not too many people knew the details, including me. But I’d be damned if I’d let either one of those fuckers ever get their hands on Isabella or Tatiana.
“Why these women?” I asked, anger simmering in my blood.
Both of the guys’ eyes tried to follow my movement, but they were unfocused and one of them pretty much swollen shut.
“I don’t fucking know,” he cried out, his body shaking with fear. “Something about the current Santos refusing to continue his father’s flesh agreement.”
Had Alphonso and Romano known about Isabella all along? Alexei and I shared looks. He knew what that meant. Isabella’s connection to Lombardo Santos was known. Maybe the old Santos dealings in human trafficking was the only thing that spared her all these years.
“We were just going to grab them and deliver the package.” The other guy chimed in, screeching like a damn bitch each time Alexei took a step towards him with his swiss knife, taunting him.
“Tst, tsk,” I started, my voice calm while my blood boiled. “You should never touch things that don’t belong to you.”
“I’m sorry, man.” Blood dripped from Regi’s mouth mixed with drool as he tried to speak through his slip, bruised lip.
“Not nearly sorry enough,” I told him, glancing at Alexei. “The sheers.”
Alexei picked them from a nearby table and handed them to me with a smirk. Alexei might be my half-brother but he was very much like me and Sasha. He liked to make people pay for hurting women, hungry for revenge.
The coward hanging off the chains started to back up, realizing what we had planned.
“And guess what buddy?” I taunted him. “It was Regi, right?” He nodded his head, his whole body shaking. “You tried to rape my woman.” I turned my gaze to Dino. “And you, fucker, dared to eye her… like she was for sale,” I snarled, and got in his face so he could see the rage he evoked within me. Let him taste it; he had no idea what was coming his way. “Women are not for sale in my territory. Never have been and never will be. Especially those two women you tried to pick up tonight.”
His eyes got big, ready to pop out of his skull. “I-I wasn’t,” he stammered. “We wanted to take only the brunette. I was just going to feel her up and then take her to Benito. The other one was just an extra bonus.”
Fucking, idiot.Wrong thing to say because in the next second, all I saw was red. Images of his hand on the woman that moaned my name while straddling me barely an hour ago sent me over the edge. And he was going to take my fucking sister!
I cut through his pinkie first. His scream echoed through the basement but nobody would hear him. This room was designed specially to prevent a single sound from escaping. There could be a person with their ear pressed against the door right outside, and they’d never hear a goddamn thing.
“My turn.” Alexei grinned at the screaming bastard and grabbed another pair of the sheers. He cut his other pinkie and then more screaming.
“You fucking coward,” I spat at him. “Not so brave now, are you?”
I grabbed him by his throat and squeezed hard, watching the light extinguish in his eyes. When he was no longer breathing, I dropped him like a ragdoll onto the ground.
